“I came for the waters.”
“But this is the desert.”
“Then I must have been misinformed.”
. . .A handsome man and a beautiful woman
are in close profile (deep red sky in the background):
“You are sending a soldier off to fight for a lost
cause, so kiss me---kiss me just once.” . . . A young
muscular husband, holding his head in his hands,
bellows for his wife; will she return to him?
Probably yes. . . . A rich old man lets a snow globe
slip from his fingers as he dies; he utters a single
word; the globe bounces erratically down a carpeted
staircase and then smashes into a thousand tiny pieces.
. . .An ugly mean looking man with a broad strap in his
hand glares at you and snarls, “You, you’re next!”
. . .Finally try to envision a night time scene: a young
fellow in a tight-fitting suit runs joyously around a
lighted gushing splashing New York City fountain
back toward an older fat man who is wearing a cheap
suit with a cardboard belt; they embrace and the picture
instantly freezes and the credits begin to appear.

Parody

Parody and satire are easy; truth is difficult.
Obscenity is the first refuge of the morally illiterate.
Like baseball, there is no crying in poetry.
Too many poems have already been written about the moon.
“Mother Nature” is, of course, a myth.
Dreams display our illogically sweeter self.
Dogs, as a rule, don’t like oatmeal or coffee or lettuce.

Ruminations

You go to the door.

You sit in the chair and stare.

You remember your mother.

Then you remember your father.

Your wife comes into the room.

You remember one of your sisters, the fat one.

No one sees you in the lobby of the hotel. You see no one except
the person at the desk. He knows you’re there, but he doesn’t look at you.

You ask someone for your umbrella. They say they don’t know what you’re
talking about and they don’t have it.

Your fat sister yells at you; you remain silent. She brings up an argument that
you had with her years ago.

Nothing deters you from loving yourself.

Sometimes you hate yourself.

A dog comes around the corner and barks at you. You see the dog and try to
ignore it.

You like flowers, but not too much.

You try your best not to get angry with people.

You like to look at the ocean.

Danbury, Connecticut

There are too many people in Danbury, Connecticut.
You might expect to see a lot of people in New York
City or, say, Chicago, but why in Danbury, Connecticut?

The restaurants and the motels and everything else is
jammed full of them. People are everywhere; they get
in your way---whole unruly families of them---and the
roads are full of them and once you get on a highway
near Danbury, Connecticut, and you find out that you
are on the wrong highway, you can never turn around
and go back. You are doomed to stay on that highway
forever or until you get a chance to look at your map
(or, if you are fortunate enough to have some one else
with you, have them look at a map) and figure out a way
back through a maze of conflicting and extremely busy
and dangerous highways full of impatient drivers who
seem to know where they are going and who look down
on you with hatred and contempt and who do not hesitate
to blow their raucous angry horns at you.

Joseph Buehler has published over 60 poems by the summer of 2017 in ArLiJo, Nine Mile Magazine, Sentinel Literary Quarterly in the U.K., Serving House Journal, Futures Trading, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Indiana Voice Journal and elsewhere. He is retired and lives in Georgia with his wife Trish.